Comparison between the Mythology Heroes and the Modern Day Heroes and Heroines

Name Course number Instructor’s name Date Comparison between the Mythology Heroes and the Modern Day Heroes and Heroines Myths are stories that have been in existence for ages and have been used to define the importance of different cultures among people and nations around the world. The stories entail heroic characters that espouse desired characteristics that are praised and serve as examples of preferred social behavior within the different societies (Carlson 10). The heroes’ exemplary activities and accomplishments are deemed fascinating and attractive to all that read the myths. Mythology has a primary way of portraying the heroic sense in a particular pattern. The pattern is different from how the modern day heroic characters are portrayed. This paper seeks to show how the differences emerge using textual references. It will outline how the modern day characters are portrayed as heroes with existing human like characters without the ability for omnipresence among other differences. Modern day heroic characters are sometimes used in stories of the traditional mythology. They are also featured in stories of people that have lived in recent memory that fit the criteria for legends. However, one difference between them is that modern heroic characters are used in works that exist in the present day while the mythology characters feature in ancient events (Carlson 25). Modern heroic characters feature in the stories that have been written in the last one hundred years compared to the last thousands of years span for the traditional mythology. For instance, Mary Monroe may be considered as a character in modern mythology because she lived in the last decades and remains widely known. Most traditional mythology heroes involve supernatural characters and gods such as Hercules and Odysseus, Achilles, Persus, Xena, and Kratos that existed thousands of years ago (Carlson 14). The modern heroic characters as portrayed in super hero movies and derived from comic books have human frailties and weaknesses that resemble normal human beings. This is in contrast to the mythological heroes who portray superpowers they were mostly gods such as the Greco-Roman heroes (Indick 2). The modern hero is faced with personal inadequacies of doubt, fear and anxiety, which allow the viewers and readers to identify with them as characteristic of humanity. The modern hero has a combination of both the human nature and a powerful super villain nature (Indick 2). For instance, a modern heroic character spider man was a student and in love with a girl Jane before he was bitten by a spider that transferred super powers to him. As he takes on his sup...